To the Assembly of the Common Peasantry

Thomas Müntzer (spring 1525)

On False And Unlimited Power, Which One Is Not Obliged To Obey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the popes, emperors, kings, etc. who puff themselves up in their own estimation

above other pious poor Christians, claiming to be a better kind of human – as if their lord-ship

and  authority  to  rule others were innate – do  not want to  recognize that they  are God’s

stewards and officials. And they do not govern according to his commandment to maintain

the common good and brotherly unity among us. God has established and ordained authority

for this reason alone and no other. But rulers who want to be lords for their own sake are all

false rulers and not worthy of the lowest office among Christians. For God alone wants to be

lord and he says in Deuteronomy 12 [:11], “You shall keep my commandment in your hand

like a measuring rod according to which you shall judge – straight ahead, not deviating either

to the left or to the right.” The same point is made in Job 5 [:8].

 

Therefore whichever prince or lord invents and sets up his own self-serving burdens

and commands, rules falsely, and he dares impudently to deceive God, his own lord. Where

are you, you werewolves, you band of Behemoths, with your financial tricks which impose

one burden after another on the poor people? This year a labour service is voluntary; next year

it becomes compulsory. In most cases this is how your old customary law has grown.

In what”dementia” or “camouflage” did God, your lord, give you such power that we poor people

have to cultivate your lands with labour services? But only in good weather, for on rainy days

we poor people see the fruits of our sweat rot in  the fields. May God, in his justice, not

tolerate the terrible Babylonian  captivity  in  which  we poor people are driven  to mow the

lords’ meadows, to make hay, to cultivate the fields, to sow flax in them, to cut it, comb it,

heat it, wash it, pound it, and spin it – yes, even to sew their underpants on their arses. We

also have to pick peas and harvest carrots and asparagus.

 

Help us, God! Where has such misery ever been heard of! They tax and tear out the

marrow of the poor people’s bones, and we have to pay interest on that! Where are they, with

their hired murderers and horsemen, the gamblers and whoremasters, who are stuffed fuller

than  puking  dogs? In addition, we poor people have to  give them taxes, payments, and

interest. And at home [they assume that] the poor should have neither bread, salt, nor lard for

their wives and small children. Where are they, with their entry fines and heriot dues? Yes,

damn their disgraceful fines and robber’s dues! Where are the tyrants and raging ones, who

appropriate taxes, customs, and user fees and waste them so shamefully and wantonly and

lose what should go into the common chest or purse to serve the needs of the territory.

And nevertheless no one can turn up his nose at them, or he is immediately treated

like a treacherous rogue – put in the stocks, beheaded, quartered! He is shown less pity than a

mad dog.

 

Did  God  give them such  power? On the peak  of what monk’s cowl is it written?

Indeed, their authority is from God. But so remotely  that they  have become the devil’s

soldiers and Satan is their captain. Yes, they have been truly rejected, being enemies in their

own territory. And what about their serfdom? Damn their unchristian, heathen nature. How

they torture us poor people! We are the spiritual serfs of the clergy and the bodily serfs of the

secular powers. Help  us, eternal God! What great unchristian misery  and murder is being

done to your property, which your only-begotten son, lord of heaven and earth – and lord of

this band  of Behemoths – purchased  at such  a high  price with  his bitter death! Put these

Moabites and this band of Behemoths as far behind you and as far away [as you can]. This is

God’s greatest pleasure. And  how little there will be prayed  for! If one of their village

officials wanted to impose anything on the poor in his own self-interest, they would depose

him with  a harsh  punishment. The princes and  lords themselves deserve nothing  less for

making self-serving commandments, which are outside the common good and unserviceable

for brotherly unity.

 

Do not let yourselves be led astray and blinded to any degree because every day the

authorities endlessly repeat what the apostle Peter says in I Peter 2 [:18]: “You should  be

submissive to your lords, even if they are rogues,” etc. In truth, the sword [of Scripture] cuts

sharply on both sides, and until now they have fought masterfully with it. But we want to see

how Tileman [a foolish man], confuses divine Scripture again, and the wolf so cleverly puts

on  sheep’s clothing. Truly, truly, St. Peter’s view means something  very  different; for

according to their interpretation, we would have to deliver our pious wives and children to

them, so that they could satisfy their lust with them.

 

The basic cause and  source of the whole confederation  of the Swiss was the

unlimited, tyrannical power of the nobility  and  of other authorities. For daily, with their

unchristian, tyrannical rape, they did not spare the common man, but forced and compelled

him contrary  to  all equity. And  this grew out of their pride, blasphemous power, and

enterprise. Their rule had to be abolished and rooted out through great war, bloodshed, and

use of the sword, as is indicated in the Swiss chronicles and in many other reliable histories

and  writings. The conclusion  of this pamphlet talks a bit about this. The lords were also

allowed to murder pious and upright people for hunting a hare, and they did similar things

because of their perverted minds. Indeed, such a Babylonian captivity has tightly confined us.

But the primary responsibility for it rests with the authority which saw itself as, and

boasted  of being, “spiritual.” Indeed, it was lustful! The bishops were sheep-biters. The

sheepdogs of the parish  themselves tore apart the good  lambs, which  they  were supposed

faithfully  to  tend  and  protect. In  this way  the werewolves [tyrannical secular authorities]

joined them in falling violently on the good sheep. For a long time now they have tended the

sheep according to their pleasure and to their heart’s content, and – I should surely say it -

have made monkeys of the sheep.

 

God can and will no longer tolerate this great misery and wantonness, which is now

found everywhere. May God enlighten his poor lambs through divine grace and, with true

Christian faith, and protect them against these ravaging wolves. And he will not enlighten the

lambs in the form in which the pernicious and cursed vermin copulate with each other – “If

you help me, I will help you.” Look, is it not a lamentable plague that they market divine

Scripture in  such  a miserable and  shameful way, [insisting] so  strictly  and  without any

foundation on obedience to their roguish commands? In truth, there is a great remedy [for

what they  do], namely  none other than  divine Scripture – according to  which  they should

judge and administer, strictly adhering to justice and without deviation.

 

In sum, the Latin word discolus in this passage of St. Peter’s letter [i.e. I Pet. 2:18]

can in no way be translated as “rogues,” as they jabber; rather it means “a coarse, uncouth or

angry person, who may also be very pious at the same time.” For David says in Psalm 4 [:5],

“Be angry, but sin not.” And St. Peter mentions here only servants. They should faithfully serve

their  lords. Even  if their lord  is upset and  angry  with them, they should serve him no less

faithfully despite this. If they  do  not, they  cannot excuse themselves for taking  their wage without

earning it. They should leave his service instead. That would be the Christian way to live.

And even if this text of Peter had the meaning which they blabber about, that “rogues” should

be obeyed, it is still in the sense of divine commandments.

 

In sum, the basis of St. Peter’s whole epistle is directed only to God’s honor, brotherly

fidelity, and unity. The selfish rogues boast that they follow these commandments. Indeed,

they follow them as werewolves do good lambs!

——————————————

Thomas Müntzer was an early Reformation era German theologian who became a rebel leader during the German Peasant’s War of the 1520s. He turned against Martin Luther with several anti-Lutheran writings, and supported the Anabaptists. In the Battle of  Frankenhausen Müntzer and his followers were defeated. He was captured, tortured and decapitated.

Augustine on Memory: A Note on Confessions 10.8-37

Amlan Dasgupta 

 

The Greek word for truth – or more correctly, one of the several words that appear to have been used – is aletheia. The word figures largely in NT Greek and is usually rendered in Latin by the word veritas.  Literally, however, aletheia, from the verb lanthanō with the alpha-privative, would mean that which is unconcealed or even unforgotten, that which does not escape memory.  The river Lethe in the Greek underworld is the river of forgetting, by crossing which mortals forget their past lives.  This view was famously held by Heidegger, who pointed to the pre-Socratic, specifically Homeric, sense of the word. In the oral world of the Homeric epic it is the poet’s commemorative power that enables him to cross the boundary between the living and the dead, between presence and oblivion. Charles Segal writes: “what is truthful for the archaic poet is not the so much what is factually exact as what successfully resists the corrosive darkness of forgetting”.

There are many powerful characterizations of memory and remembering in Greek philosophy which may usefully serve to contextualize Augustine’s own reflections on the subject. Starting from the Platonic discussion of memory in the late dialogues, through Aristotle’s subtle distinction of recollection and memory, to the Stoics, there were a number of important theoretical statements to choose from.  Even as Augustine inaugurates a new ethic of memory, there is much he carries over from the past, which is only natural considering his deep immersion in classical culture in his early life. Augustine was certainly familiar with the main arguments of his predecessors, and his own treatment has certainly both Platonic and Stoic resonances. We might briefly point to the fact that Augustine tacitly adopts a position popularized in Stoic physical doctrine, that the human soul, or a part of it, is the controlling principle of the human organism. It is to this regulating, rational faculty that the Stoics gave the name hegemonikon; technically part of the soul, pneuma, it regulated ideally the other parts, namely the five senses, the reproductive faculty and the speech faculty. It was the hegemonikon which received sense-data and retained it either as “imprinting” (tuposis) or an” alteration” (alloiosis). The fundamental power of the hegemonikon was to form presentations or phantasiai, which were conveyed by the senses. Memory was stored phantasiai, but they could produce complex structures: conceptions (ennoemata) or even fictional and non-existent things. Marcia Colish points out that Augustine’s own notion of the soul, while retaining traces of the Stoic position, is immeasurably more complex: he integrates into the Stoic concept of the faculties the distinction between the vegetative, animate and rational soul as put forward by the Peripatetics and the Neoplatonic  valuation of the spiritual over the physical aspects of human nature:  to this Neoplatonized and Aristotelianized conception of the Stoic hegemonikon he adds “the Christian goal of spiritual renewal and communion” (1990:206).

There are three major locations for studying Augustine’s thought on memory and remembering, though the subject is an important one to him, and one to which he frequently turns.  Significantly they span a great part of his career, and it is quite obvious that there are some differences in approach. The three primary texts are De Magistro, dating from about 389, Confessions 10, probably composed somewhere between 397 and 401, and De Trinitate, completed not before 422. I shall look today solely at one of these texts for reasons simply of easy accessibility: but also the Confessions are not only the most widely read of Augustine’s works, but from the point of view of the present discussion, clearly one that allows us to form a cogent idea of some of the leading notions that inform Augustine’s thought on the memory.

The first 9 books of the Augustine chart the story of his early life bringing us to the critical point of his baptism, his abandonment of the study of classical rhetoric and his consequent entry into the Christian life. The 9^th book describes also a number of personal tragedies: the death of his mother Monica and the death of his friends.  The 10^th book is in some senses the beginning of a new section, which includes the discussion of memory, time (11) and language (12). The reflections in this concluding section turn back on the nature of personal recollection: what kind of truth value can be attributed to this narrative of personal experience? Do past memories influence behavior, and if so is the result for the better or the worse? The discussion of memory in Book 10 thus introduces a new form of self reflexivity into the narrative: the product of memory now leads to a discussion of the faculty of memory and the process of remembering. Augustine encounters memory in the course of a journey of self realization and self expression: to realize himself through his record of personal experience, and to present to his readers a life that can be read, that is turned into writing. Thus Augustine’s “confessions” in front of God has another kind of audience, that of the readers and hearers of the Christian community for whom it must be an exemplary exercise.

In 10.7.11 Augustine says that will transcend even the natural power by which he lives and has the experience of the senses, as this is enjoyed by baser animals too: and in doing so he encounters memory, which for Cicero distinguished man from beast (Tusc. 1.24.57ff).  The wide fields and roomy palaces of memory that Augustine describes in the inaugural section (10.8.12) are a storehouse (thesaurus) of images (imagines) which are conveyed to it by the senses. It appears thus to be a repository, a place, essentially a passive faculty, in which the information provided by the senses is stored up: all that which has not been taken away (absorbuit et sepelevit, lit. devoured and buried) by oblivion. It may be noted that the use of memoria is however not wholly fixed, sometimes referring to something like a “container”, sometimes encompassing imagination and conception. In De Magistro,12,  Augustine makes the curious observation that when we consider the sense data of past experience, i.e. the primary content of memory, “we do not speak about the things themselves, but of images impressed from them on the mind and committed to memory”. Gareth Matthews points out how Augustine seems to be saying that instead of speaking of the things themselves, we change the subject and talk about the memory images instead. Augustine here seems to be making some kind of distinction between the experience of the present (where there is knowledge of things themselves) and the past (where there is knowledge only of traces left behind by sense perception). The early view seems to be closer to the Stoic (specifically Zeno’s) view about sense data” imprinting” itself on memory  (tuposis); in Confessions even though the passive nature of the memory per se is retained, it is seen as being interpenetrated by other, and more active, faculties.

Augustine marvels at the apparently inexhaustible resources of memory. All the evidence of the senses are stored up it, neatly docketed and labelled, in its “indescribable departments”, waiting to be recalled to the present. Whatever he seeks to summon appears immediately: Augustine is struck by the fact that even in silence and darkness he can relive sight and sound. The ensuing sections (17-18) are particularly dense and change our understanding of the memory simply as a receptacle for sense data. For when we hear a word being spoken we form an image of the thing that the word indicates. However the thing itself is not an object of sensory experience. The sound of the word fades away as soon as it is uttered, but the things remain in our minds. Augustine here seems to move towards a Platonic assertion that knowledge is pre-existent in the mind (Augustine uses cordi, in the heart) but not in memory.

In my heart then they were, even before I learned them, but in my memory they were not. Where then? or wherefore, when they were spoken, did I acknowledge them, and said, “So is it, it is true,” unless that they were already in the memory, but so thrown back and buried as it were in deeper recesses, that had not the suggestion of another drawn them forth I had perchance been unable to conceive of them? 10.10.17

 

It is here that one might also insert a role for language even though Augustine does not directly allude to it. All that we remember is already present in the mind: the function of the learning process is to take what is “random and unarranged”, and organize them into a systematic body. Language may hold the key here.  Augustine writes:

 

I do indeed hold the images of the sounds of which those words be composed, and that those sounds, with a noise passed through the air, and now are not. But the things themselves which are signified by those sounds, I never reached with any sense of my body…

 

The structure of language mirrors the contents of memory, newly retrieved from their disorganized state in the human heart, and stored up for use. The memory itself is a site in which the objects of knowledge continually shift and exchange places. We find out things and place them close at hand and say that we have learned these things. But soon as we cease to call them up, they slide into deeper recesses of memory, and if again required for use must be drawn together again. The object of thinking (cogitare) is really that of re-collection, not that which is collected anyhow (cogere).

 

Augustine probes into several of the psychological singularities of memory. He explores for instance the problem of knowing falsehoods (in that we truly know that we remember false things) and also that we remember things differently at different times. I may in fact remember knowing something in a certain way at one point of time, and in a different way at another. We thus remember remembering: at a later time I shall be able to recall that at such I time I remembered these things. We also recall past emotions: moments of pain and fear can be recollected without the sensations of pain and fear. In fact we might remember sorrow with joy and joy with sorrow. Augustine applies a striking analogy at the end of 14.21, saying that the memory is the belly of the mind: it contains joy and sadness as the stomach contains sweet and bitter food. The memory, like the belly, is unable to determine the nature of the emotion by itself. That we contain the experience of intense suffering within oneself does not affect one all the time: even when they are recalled from the memory by the mind, one might not have to undergo the same suffering. Yet there does seem to be a difficulty here. Undoubtedly we find in the memory the affect of experience, which is not something which inheres in the nature of experience but the affectations of the mind which receives them.

 

And yet how could we speak of them, if we did not find in our memory, not only the sounds of the names according to the images impressed by the senses of the body, but very notions of the things themselves? Things we never received by any avenue of the body, but which the mind itself perceived by the experience of its own passions, and committed to the memory? How could the memory  retain the passion of the mind without experiencing that passion?  14.22

 

The relationship of mind and memory remains difficult to understand.  At one point Augustine seems to willing to give up this relation: “Does the memory perhaps not belong to the mind? Who will say so?” (14.21) Augustine returns to the problem of mental images once again in the context of naming.  Images take their place with conceptual entities, affections of the mind and bodily states as being the content of memory. But at every step there arise new difficulties: when I name forgetting I remember it and understand it. Not only do I know the word “forgetting” but I also know what it means, which is a privation of memory. So the memory knows both itself, that is memory remembers “memory” and also remembers its absence. Consequently, we cannot say that forgetfulness itself is present in our mind when we remember it but only its image, for  “if forgetfulness were present through itself, it would not lead us to remember, but only to forget. Now who will someday work this out? Who can understand how it is?”  The text at this point falters, and reveals the strain of pursuing this line of thought. For it is not some abstruse, distant question that we are considering, like the distance between the stars or the weight of the earth. It is strictly personal, for “it is I – my mind – who remember”. There is nothing which is closer to me than myself obviously, and he seems to conclude that the question of forgetfulness is at the end a paradox of self-knowledge, that exists but cannot be rendered fully as a rational argument.

 

In 17.26 Augustine goes on to distinguish finally among the knowledge of sensory things present to us as images (imagines) , the knowledge of sciences through their  methods (praesentia) and the knowledge of emotional states through a kind of mental system of notation (notiones vel notationes).  Augustine is deeply moved and even fearful at this manifold power of the memory, as of the human mind of which it is the characteristic faculty.

Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing (horrendum) my God, a deep and boundless multiplicity. And this is the mind and this is me. What am I then, O my God, of what nature am I? …Behold in the plains, and caves, and caverns of my memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things, either through images, as all bodies; or by actual presence, as the arts; or by certain notions or impressions, as the affections of the mind, which, even when the mind doth not feel, the memory retaineth, while yet whatsoever is in the memory is also in the mind—over all these do I run, I fly; I dive on this side and on that, as far as I can, and there is no end. So great is the force of memory, so great the force of life, even in the mortal life of man. 10.17.26

Brian Stock astutely observes that Augustine’s concern with memory is never at a purely philosophical level, and that he is adept at creating decoys behind which his practical objectives are masked.  In the Confessions his discussion brings him to the paradox that God cannot be contained in the memory.  The curious vacillations that we have seen serve to define the problem of the knowledge of God: is it something that is contained in memory or is it beyond memory? Both remembering and forgetting have a part to play in setting out the problem. In 18.27 he uses the parable of a woman who has lost her money but finds it after she searches for it with a light. When she finds it she is happy, because she has found her money, the one that she was looking for. The women needs to forget to have the pleasure of rediscovering: and this turns out to have a greater significance, for like the woman Augustine has also searched for many things and has been confronted with many objects with the question “Is this it?” His answer has been “No” until he recognizes the object that he actually lost.  This is what appears to be the case when is looking for God. For searching for God is searching for the good life, the life in which the soul lives. It is something that has to be forgotten for us to seek it, and that appears to be the nature of human life: the inevitability of forgetting as well as the need for continuing the search incessantly. But how is happiness to be recognized? Did it pre-exist in his soul? Or to put it differently, did God exist within him so that he is able to recognize happiness when he experiences it? Evidently this is not like remembering Carthage, for it is not an object or assemblage of objects.  Augustine is at pains to demonstrate that happiness in this supreme sense is not the object of any possible kind of physical perception, thus entirely different from the memory of joy. But we have not experienced God, nor have we experienced happiness. Those who are content with the joy that conforms to their expectations and experiences are evidently different from the seeker who seeks God.  Stock describes the situations succinctly:

It is clear why individuals are not happy. They are unable to break with the past. They take greater pleasure in things that will not make them permanently happy, since these are easier to recall..(.)

If Augustine began by praising the infinite capacity of the memory to contain experience, he now feels that creates an over-dependence on the past, a slavery to habit and custom, and consequently an orientation to vice than to virtue. God is known neither by experience nor properly by pre-existent knowledge, but by the grace of God himself in making available to us: I  discover nothing about God that God has not taught me.

If God enters the memory at all it is not by finding a place in the container. God remains in man’s changeable mind through an act of his own willing, not that of human design.

For thou art the Lord God of the mind and of all these things that are mutable; but thou abidest immutable over all. Yet thou hast elected to dwell in my memory from the time I learned of thee. But why do I now inquire about the part of my memory thou dost dwell in, as if indeed there were separate parts in it? Assuredly, thou dwellest in it, since I have remembered thee from the time I learned of thee, and I find thee in my memory when I call thee to mind. 26.37

Augustine finally finds a place for God in the memory by delocalizing him. God exists in memory as much as outside it. We go backward and forward, he says, but there is really no place which may be assigned to God “save in thyself beyond me”. It is as the interior teacher that God exists in us. In the remainder of Book 10 Augustine “remembers” the sins and temptations that have assailed him up to now, but only to seek deliverance from them with divine aid. The act of confession, an act of memory, now inaugurates a process of self-remaking and reform.

——————————————-

Amlan Dasgupta is Professor of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

 

A Muslim Meditation on Violence

Nauman Naqvi

What is the source of Islam’s potential for a beautiful, passive revolution today? How are the greater and lesser jihads distinct and entangled? What are the experiences of force given in the Muslim tradition? What are the relations between beauty, divinity, history and the forces of peace, truth and violence in this tradition? These are the prayers, the questions silently addressed in this filmic presentation of the anguished work of poesy and asceticism against historical violence in the painter-poet Sadequain (1930-87) – a presentation of the experience and logic of another force given in Islam, and dramatized in the life and oeuvre of this postcolonial Pakistani artist. Through a range of effects – including a generous and dynamic display of striking images juxtaposed with ravishing lyric from both Sadequain, as well as the larger Indic-Muslim and affinate traditions of the pre- and post-colonial modern period – this lecture-film enacts the experience and logic of this other force in three dramatic scenes of a performative lecture given by Nauman Naqvi at The Second Floor (PeaceNiche) in Karachi. The scenes – the hand, the head, and gesture – are scenes of what Sadequain called the technique of ‘mystic figuration’ in his painting: a certain tortured entanglement of the aesthetic, the ethical and truth in Muslim inheritance. An anguished entanglement of beauty, the good and truth in their ecstatic appearance in the secular world – the world of sight and sound – that is inseparable from the demand of sacrifice, of a strenuous self-canceling intention given in the aspect of a subtle violence of immanence in the Muslim understanding of being and existence. In tracing this haunting, subtle force of life, the lecture-film gestures towards the potential inheritance of a radically ethical politics of universal grace in Islam.

Please click the link for viewing the lecture film:  http://vimeo.com/28159751

HumanitiesUnderground thanks Nauman Naqvi for providing and allowing us to publish the video text.

Pranayam Revolution & the Baba

Varuni Bhatia

The Strange Case of Baba Ramdev

A young Yadav lad, the son of a low-income Haryana farmer, grows up in the decade of the seventies, the low-point of Nehruvian socialism. He is put through middle school with considerable financial strain on his family. The young boy goes through impressionable years of his life learning of an India of historical greatness, the dreams and aspirations that history textbooks routinely weave in telling a heroic narrative of the nation’s struggle to come into its own. A picture of Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ and Subhas Chandra Bose allegedly hang in his room. Perhaps he is taken out of the government school that he attends and sent to a gurukul-type private school for a better education. As an adolescent, this boy continues to be influenced by the kind of ascetic masculinity that had spurred early twentieth-century nation building and anti-colonialism—his heroes from the canon of the freedom movement are militant nationalists such as Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ and Subhas Chandra Bose, as well as hardliners such as Sardar Patel—not a usual fare of Gandhi-Nehru dominated freedom struggle.

Thirty years hence, a vernacular godman grips the attention of the world, claiming almost-miraculous powers to yoga and Ayurveda. Breath practices and disciplined living, we are told, can sure diseases such as AIDS; allopathic medicine, we are told, is a charade and must be replaced by Ayurveda; yoga is the answer to all problems. This Swami wows recent spate of Indian diaspora in the first world with his ability to contort his body and subject it to seemingly impossible tortures. The nation, on the other hand, already knows him as a familiar figure, waking up with his call to yoga on Aastha channel every morning. The Swami emerges, already famous, having seemingly bypassed the usual route of a gradual rise to popularity. His online hagiographies already show elements of obfuscation. Lack of particulars notwithstanding, we get a picture of a Swami who has not merely risen as a traditional godman pandering to the elites, but a veritable saffron-clad warrior for vernacular democracy who has done an excellent task of guaranteeing himself a core support group amongst lower income, middle classes of the Hindi belt—precisely the same background that he emerged from; a tour de force that differentiates him from other godmen, as we shall see.

Today, this low-income boy who turned into a godman heads an empire of traditional healing practices, that include an Ayurveda university, a traditional healing retreat cum medicine facility, and a yoga retreat (all three near Haridwar); yoga workshops run by trained yoga instructors in various small and large towns of north India; an enormously popular brand ‘Divya Mandir’ of herbal products; a vast internet presence through websites, facebook pages, blogs, and youtube videos; and a sizable and growing support group for his programs both within and outside India. His current worth is estimated at over 1000 crores, and he has successful organizations and centers in various parts of the world especially targeting the Indian diaspora. The Swami’s meteoric rise in popularity and his heady mix of faith-based practices with a program of rejuvenating the nation beg the question as to how is he different from others of his ilk. Purveyors of a new and global Hinduism such as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Nityananda, Sathya Sai Baba, Ma Amritanandamayi and so on have also amassed a significant following of celebrities and the general public in recent years. Different he is, and it may be of vital importance for us parse out his ultra-nationalist vision, so as not to confuse him with any other godman or woman who largely seem satisfied with doling out Hindu ecumenism for consumption in the global marketplace of spiritualism.

The key to Ramdev’s success lies in his projection of himself as a rejuvenator of the Indian nation. He is at the helm of a movement (a self-proclaimed andolan, no less) that has turned him from a savvy businessman and traditional healer into the most contemporary face of neo-Swadeshi and neo-Hindutva nationalism in India. Liberal and left-leaning intellectuals and journalists have condemned him for holding the country hostage to an improbable, laughable and socially conservative agenda, drawing attention to fascistic tendencies underlying his programs. Much of the critique, however, reverts to portraying him as a traditional godman and a charlatan, out to con the intellectually-challenged lower middle class Indian populace who have readily abandoned rational thought to pledge support to this mystic.

However, we can no longer ignore a sustained analysis of this contemporary face of Swadeshi socialism and Hindutva culturalism that emerges through the Baba phenomenon. The Baba has been able to cleverly revive and older RSS program based on national pride, majoritarian social justice, and punitively hardline agenda combining it with a savvy use of a keen business-sense, new media practices, and located as its enemy a well-honed notion of corruption, both moral and financial. He has also been able to tap into older RSS networks, which the BJP had alienated in its projection of a ‘Shining’ India, and from where he derives the core of his popular support. As the face of India’s neo-Hindutva movement, the Baba phenomenon is significant enough to merit a sustained analysis of the discursive and operational networks. What is even more remarkable is that these networks have arisen in less than a decade. The Baba may not be a mere passing fad or a momentary fancy, but a new player on the India’s Hindu rightwing spectrum, so any ignorance about his organizational network and capacities will be at our own peril.

Structure of a ‘Revolution’: Unpacking Corporate Neo-Swadeshi

Underlying Baba Ramdev’s anti-graft movement is a program of Swadeshi economic reform. It is worth considering his network of organizations to see the kind of Swadeshi that is being imagined there. Baba Ramdev’s umbrella organization is called the Divya Yog Mandir, or the Patanjali Yog Peeth, and it is headquartered in Haridwar. The Yog Peeth claims a hoary origin, as an extension of the Kripalu Bagh Ashram established in 1932 by Acharya Kripalu Dev and Swami Shraddhananda of the Arya Samaj in Hardwar. In 1995, the Divya Yog Mandir, also known as the Patanjali Yog Peeth (hereafter, PYP), was established, and in 2006, a star-studded inauguration of the current building of the Yog Peeth was done by the then Vice-President of India, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. A documentary on PYP found on its website notes that Chief Ministers of 17 states attended the ceremony including N. D. Tiwari, Sheila Dixit, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and Nitish Kumar. Run as a combination of yoga retreat, traditional healing research center, nationalist camp, and spiritual vacation, the PYP offers medicinal, religious, and recreational services. The Yog Peeth sponsors a range of activities that are aimed at a wide cross-section of Indian population, both at home and in the diaspora. Within India, the network of institutions supported by the PYP consists of “Campuses” and “Undertakings and Departments”. Three main campuses are listed on the website. Although this list is by no means exhaustive and does not mention the physical and virtual ‘campuses’ outside of Haridwar, it is nonetheless informative of the range of core activities carried out by PYP:

1. Patanjali Yog Peeth II: This is a campus on 35 acres of land, where “Yoga Science residential camps” are held with the Baba.

 2. Yog Gram: “An eco-friendly place equipped with modern amenities amidst breathtaking beauty of Nature,” according to PYP website description. However, the website of Yog Gram shows it to be a medical center imparting traditional healing. Those suffering from medical ailments are given preference in admittance, although visitors are allowed to visit and stay. Rates of residence vary from Rs. 1,000 per day to Rs. 3,000 per day, with a minimum stay of 7 days and a maximum stay of 50 days allowed.

3. Patanjali Herbal Garden and Agro Research Department: A greenhouse where medicinal herbs are kept and preserved for research.

Apart from Campuses that serve the purpose of elite getaways combined with traditional forms of healing, the PYP also sponsors wide-reaching programs that are aimed for the public at large. Categorized as “Undertakings and Departments,” these consist of the following activities:

1. Conducting yoga camps, residential and non-residential, across the globe.

 2. Making use of television to popularize yoga on an everyday basis.

3. Establishing “Patanjali Yog Samitis” at state, district, tehsil, and village levels.

4. Establishing an accredited University for teaching and research in Ayurveda.

The PYP runs branch institutes and yoga centers both within and outside India. One such branch was opened in Nepal last year with full support of the Nepali government. Another has recently opened in Wee Cumbria, a Scottish island worth 3.3 million pounds, donated by Mrs. Sunita Poddar—Ramdev supporter and an activist of alternate medicine in the UK.

Even while Baba’s popular and public persona claims fundamental democratic transformations, it will be clear from examining his own organizations that he sits at the helm of a practically oligarchic structure based upon income and wealth. Membership of the Yog Peeth Trust (hereafter PYT), the Yog Peeth’s main policymaking body, is based upon monetary donations. Four kinds of members of the trust—Corporate, Founder, Patron, and Life—deliberate over policy matters. These members must pay, on a sliding scale, a minimum of 11 lakhs, 5 lakhs, 2 lakhs 50 thousand, and 1 lakh to gain membership. Apart from the above, PYT membership also contains Dignified members who pay 51,000, Respected members who pay 21,000; and General members who pay 11,000 rupees. These members can attend meetings but ordinarily have no say in policy decisions. Despite much online searching, I was unable to locate the names of the trustees of the YPT.

 At the helm of Baba’s hydra-like corporate and ideological empire is a triad of trusts: The Yog Peeth Trust, the Bharat Swabhiman Trust, and the Yog Gram. All three are run out of the same office, suggesting an underlying administrative overlap between these three organizations. The Bharat Swabhiman Trust (hereafter BST) is the main ideological and perhaps even financial sponsor of the popular movement, the Bharat Swabhiman Andolan. The BST has a password protected website that I was unable to access. Membership criterion is the same as that for Patanjali Yog Peeth: beginning with 11 lakhs at the Corporate (highest) level, and 1 lakh at the level of the Life member. Thereafter, it changes: a Special member pays 1,100 rupees, and a worker member pays a mere 51. One could also, potentially, become a general member with no payment at all. Policy matters, however, are decided only by Corporate and Founder Members who are “invited on special occassions (sic) and important meetings including policy making meetings of institution from time to time.” General and worker members of the BST seem to operate as grassroots-level volunteers imparting training in yoga and nationalism. The BST itself provides them with special training in “yog-dharma” and “rashtra-dharma,” thereby preparing them for their role as grassroots workers and volunteers. Such training is imparted in weeklong camps and is offered as a special perk to those who decide to take general membership of the Trust. It is a paradoxical situation, indeed: the main purpose of the Trust, bodily discipline and nation building, are handed out as special privileges to its ordinary members.

Swadeshi Socialism and Glocal India: Postcolonial Uses of Anti-colonial Discourse

As an indication of its program for nation-building, the BSA website promises the following: creating a healthy and prosperous India; forging a disciplined (yog-may) India; making India self-dependent through Swadeshi; and (guaranteeing) 100% voter turnout. This kind of neo-nationalist discourse, very interestingly, builds upon a well-rehearsed anti-colonial nationalism from the twenties to the forties of the last century. This appropriation and repackaging of the discourse of nation building from within anti-colonialism should not be overlooked as it plays a key role in providing a familiar aesthetic content to this neo-conservative, 21st-century patriotism. Terms such as Swadeshi and Swabhiman Andolan hark back to self-sustainment and self-respect movements from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The terms are also reminiscent of the Independence Movement (called Swadhinata Andolan in Hindi history textbooks). Not unlike the former, this ‘andolan’ too is purportedly based upon Satyagraha, or Gandhian Civil Disobedience. To pledge support to the Swabhiman Andolan, you are asked to give a missed call to a mobile number. This is, in itself, a testimony to the fascinating use of new technology (cell phones) and popular practices (missed calls). Reportedly, 60 lakh calls had already been made to this number by June 5, 2011.

The Baba is not beyond performing an andolan, replete with injustices, police brutalities, attempted escapes in disguise, and (most importantly) a discourse of martyrdom. In this regard, the Indian government’s brutal crackdown on the fasting Baba and his supporters at Ramlila grounds has only served to buttress a narrative of comparing the postcolonial state to a colonial government. Not surprisingly, Bharat Swabhiman Andolan’s facebook update after police action reads, “the government today has repeated the Jalliawaala Bagh in a democratic country.” In almost hourly updates since then, videos of police action are uploaded, and the event constantly compared to the atrocities levied by colonial authorities on the hapless and struggling non-violent freedom fighters. The deployment of anti-colonial discourse against a postcolonial state is an important aspect of the Baba’s political maneuvering and marks a significant, though unnoticed, shift in ultra-nationalist discourse in India—from the outright communal language of Hindutva ideologues to a seemingly non-communal discourse preferred by the Baba.

 The enemy in Baba’s invective can be mapped on grounds of corruption—moral, physical, and national. In this Swadeshi vision, a notional ‘West’ appears as the harbinger of these corruptions, whether it is black money stashed away in foreign banks, or practicing sex for pleasure, or even drinking aerated beverages such as Coca Cola. The Baba has strongly condemned each of these at one point or the other in recent times. The West is understood culturally, not geographically. It is a place of excesses and consumption—financial, sexual, and dietary. A patriotic Indian is, thus, a thoroughly indigenous individual, proud of their culture, and performatively non-western in thought and habit. It is not necessary that such an Indian occupy the geographical territory of the nation-state of India. The body politic of a Swabhiman Bharat is portrayed as a glocal concept, embracing the rustic Indian village as much as the non-cosmopolitan diasporic subject.

 A form of Swadeshi socialism characterizes Baba Ramdev’s vision. His more bizarre demands ask for a replacement of “British-inherited system of governance, administration, taxation, education, law and order with a swadeshi alternative.” In addition and more interestingly, the Baba also wishes to see the abolishment of the Land Acquisitions Act and has demanded standard wages for laborers all over the country. In a remarkable manifesto titled Rashtradharm, available at http://www.rashtradharm.com/, the Baba’s neo-Swadeshi discourse emerges most clearly. The riches of the nation are listed in terms of its natural resources and the manpower that harnesses these resources. Greedy corporatism and corrupt politicians allow the former to be exploited at the cost of livelihoods of millions of latter. A discourse of exploitation is hereby vernacularized, made familiar to a Hindi speaking, lower middle class support base.

 This increasing section of the Indian population has come to age by rote memorization of textbook narratives of the Indian freedom movement that held the promise of a new and egalitarian India. Baba’s agenda for change builds upon the disappointment of that textbook narrative and translates the disappointment into a vernacular idiom. As popular ultra-nationalisms go, this one too is a dangerous mix of Swadeshi socialism and saffron fascism. We see that this is not a liberal or market-driven economic agenda but one that is specifically aimed at enlarging the scope and responsibility of a culturally defined State. In the process, this non-liberally constituted nation-state is potentially given a vast array of powers and responsibilities.

Healing the Body Politic: Discipline, Corruption, and the Nation

In the Baba’s ideological expressions, we find some of the clearest articulations of the somatic idea of the nation whose health needs to be constantly monitored. Discourses about body, health, and the nation abound in this vision of a rejuvenated future. ‘India’ is understood as an aesthetic and ethical corpus that must be actively forged through ‘yog-dharm’ (discipline) and ‘rashtra-dharm’ (patriotism) of its citizens. This, in turn, is deemed capable of affecting a ‘Pranayam Revolution’ (Revolution of Breath Control)—a vernacular and bourgeois translation of the concept of Total Revolution and the transformative capacities therein. This is a revolution against corruption and westernization, and the restitution of middle-class values of work, family, culture, and sexuality. This is a socialism of the petit bourgeoisie—an economic agenda of rejuvenation by reclaiming mines, military, and black money as national resources combined with cultural agenda of rejuvenation by reviving Brahmanical social practices such as the varna and ashrama system.

Once forged, this body politic needs to be carefully guarded against diseases as varied as black money to homosexuality. The school, the university, the prison, the family, and the village hence emerge as key sites in this program of discipline. At the heart of the Pranayam Revolution lies a rigorously rational, biological, and non-salvific reworking of yoga and Ayurveda. These traditional practices of healing and spiritual exertion are thereby made available to an ultra-nationalist cause.

Unlike other twentieth century godpersons, this Baba rationalizes relentlessly. There is not a whisper of the mystical, the irrational, or the miraculous in his discourse, whether on the health of the human body or the national body. The claim is relentlessly one of science. Yoga and Ayurveda have a scientific basis, it is rigorously emphasized. Not unlike a Latourean constitution of the laboratory in early modern Europe, science in the context of the Pranayam Revolution emerges within a network of institutions and discourses—the Ayurveda University, the Patanjali Yog Peeth, centers of Ayurvedic healing in India and abroad, international forums of non-western healing, and a repackaged neo-Swadeshi for India. This insistence on science is combined with a robust negation of the mystical and the transcendental—arguably key concerns for any religious phenomenon.

 In his insistence upon science and rationality at the service of the nation, Baba Ramdev represents a contemporary face of the Arya Samaj and similarities between him and Dayananda Saraswati are worth noting. Both are vernacular-speaking sadhus who emerge rather suddenly on the scene of contemporary public life and rose rapidly in popularity. Both rigorously insist scientific basis to certain kinds of Hindu traditions and practices. Both vigorously argue against catholicity within religions—ritual, miracles, ecclesiastical authority, and so on. There is one difference between the two, though, and this has to do with their conception of the ‘Other.’ Dayananda’s invective clearly targeted non-Hindus, particularly Muslims and Christians. His writings are replete with crass insults to Islam and Christianity. In Baba Ramdev’s nationalist invective, we see a somewhat different articulation of the enemy that must be vanquished. This enemy is now understood simply as Corruption.

While the current face of Corruption is the anti-graft movement, in the larger ideological framework of the Baba’s movement, corruption includes all kinds of afflictions to the body of the nation. The Baba’s critique of the current Indian state for compromising the Indian nation is far-reaching, and at times reminds one of the more radical leftist discourse on Independence as nothing more than a transfer of power from the British to the westernized Indian elites. Corruption is given an extremely wide definition. It is “not merely a social problem but a distilled form of a political problem.” Corruption, beyond graft, is understood as a variety of morally repugnant activities, including quotidian forms such as tardiness, avoiding hard work, accepting bribes, dowry, and so on. More extreme forms of corruption include a failure to provide adequate security to the citizens of India and dealings in black money. The political system is held responsible for latter forms of corruption, while the society at large is held responsible for the earlier forms of corruption. The cure, as the manifesto states, is “character building…Therefore, parents should impart high values to their children from a tender age, and spiritual and cultural values must be assimilated in the education system to cause a visible overhaul of its social foundations.”

 Corruption, this nativist vision claims, can be cured by discipline and punishment. Harsh laws and punitive measures, including a death penalty, are demanded by the Baba for those held guilty of financial corruption. The key to nipping it in the bud, however, is bodily and mental discipline introduced at a tender age. Yog, it is asserted, not only rejuvenates the individual body like “a cell-phone charger,” but also revives the nation. “Individual and the nation are afflicted with a number of diseases, sorrows, thoughts, and evils. Yog-seva is the cure to all of them.” Yog includes bodily discipline such as breathing and dietary practices, as well as moral discipline such as hard work and truthfulness. A clear program of national rejuvenation based upon Hindu cultural nationalism thus is put in place.

There is no doubt that this is ultra-nationalist disciplinary aesthetic at its most sophisticated within a contemporary Indian context—the new face of the Hindutva program. Not unlike its earlier manifestation, here too the individual, the family, the village, the state, the diaspora, and the nation are organically related to each other. The moral and physical health of each one of these units has a bearing upon the other, and therefore needs to be carefully regulated through everyday discipline and, if need be, surgical removal. Outright communalism, however, is toned down and replaced by a majoritarian, culturalist ethos, bringing a somewhat new tone to earlier forms of Hindutva discourse.

Baba and the Gathering Clouds of Neo-Hindutva: Politics of the Apolitical

Whether Baba Ramdev emerges fully as a political actor will depend not merely on the success of his anti-corruption movement, but upon a variety of other factors, many of which are already beginning to be put into place. This includes the support he receives from the beleaguered BJP, now searching for a new populist agenda, and the manner in which organized Hindutva forces of the Sangh Parivar court the Baba. Despite all the political shenanigans taking place around the Baba in recent days, a cursory glance at readers’ responses to articles and blogs, as well as the general opinion caught on television cameras, suggest that much of the popular support for Baba’s anti-corruption fast comes from sections of the society that firmly believe his anti-corruption campaign to be non-political, aimed at a general rejuvenation of the nation. While anti-Congress sentiment undoubtedly runs high in these responses, the predominant sentiment is that this is a cause that extends beyond party lines and touches each citizen of the country, irrespective of their political affiliations.

This is clearly the politics of the apolitical. The burgeoning Indian middle-class likes to pretend that it is supporting a non-partisan cause that impacts the entire population. This has been the case with earlier Hindutva mobilizations where you were considered a good Indian only if you supported the correction of a historical wrong. More recently, the platform of the apolitical has emerged as a dangerous ground where the clouds of popular fascisms gather in a language of liberal protest. In many ways, the yoga camp at Ramlila grounds is a vernacular and mass extension of a vigilante society combined with notions of crowd justice. Take away the English, the cosmopolitanism, and the token liberalism from citizen journalists and candlelight vigils, and we have in place a much larger populist phenomenon such as the Baba and his yog-dharm. A deep mistrust of the political and judicial process characterizes both.

 The Baba himself, however, will remain a flashpoint on the political spectrum unless he categorically join hands with the existing forces of Hindutva. He has personal good relations with many of them and allegations that his anti-corruption movement is organized by the RSS have been flying around. However, his brand of Swadeshi socialism will hardly endear him to proponents of economically neo-liberal agenda within the BJP. His occasional ecumenism—the Baba once famously reportedly that one need not utter Om while performing yoga and saying Allah would be just as effective—can make him an uncomfortable ally for the religious rightwing to support. And his vernacular idiom and social conservatism has already alienated him to a certain yuppie constituency that no political party can entirely dismiss. It waits to be seen whether this apolitical political agenda of national rejuvenation and Swadeshi socialism will translate into electoral successes. No doubt, the BJP is wondering the same. For now, however, they and the Sangh Parivar are happy to ride the popular bandwagon of Baba Ramdev’s yogic cures of the nation’s afflictions.

Varuni Bhatia is Assistant Professor, Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

[1] http://www.divyayoga.com/introduction/histroy.html. Accessed June 3, 2011.

 [1] Vide documentary on PYP, available at http://www.divyayoga.com/documentry-on-pyp.html. Accessed on June 6, 2011. See also http://haryanainstitutes.com/a215260-swami-ramdevs-patanjali-yogpeeth-inagurated-by.cfm. Accessed on June 6, 2011.

 [1] For information about their activities, check http://www.divyayoga.com/divya-yog-mandir/a-campuses/pantanjali-yogpeeth-i.html. Accessed on June 3, 2011.

 [1] Vide http://www.divyayoga.com/divya-yog-mandir.html. Accessed on June 6, 2011.

 [1] Vide http://yoggram.divyayoga.com/how-to-get-registration.html. Accessed on June 3, 2011.

 [1] http://www.pranapositive.com/shm/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=15. Accessed on June 6, 2011. The Poddar family has been a key financial supporter of the Baba’s organization and endeavors. On one occasion, they also defrayed the cost of all those traveling to Hardwar to attend one of the Baba’s many Yog camps. This camp was meant for training young teachers who would teach yoga in the country and abroad.

 [1] http://bstdonation.divyayoga.com/

 [1] Ibid. See also, http://bharat-swabhiman.com/en/. Accessed June 6, 2011.

 [1] https://www.facebook.com/bharatswabhimantrust. Accessed on June 5, 2011.

 [1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2071609.ece. Accessed on June 5, 2011.

 [1] Vide, http://www.rashtradharm.com/. Accessed June 7, 2011.

 [1] http://www.rashtradharm.com/

 

Dread Not Rasta

 

                                                                                  Richard C. Salter  

The dusty street into St. Thomas, a medium-sized coastal village in the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, ran east to west along a garbage-strewn stream spiked with disposable diapers and trash. Matewé was taking me to visit Duke, a fellow well-known by youth in the area for his wisdom and the small “church” (his term) that he ran. After traversing a few alleys, and gaining entrance to Duke’s grandmother’s yard with an identifying whistle, we passed through the wooden shack into the backyard where the church sat. The church was about six feet wide by eight feet long and was built onto another building that served as its back wall. The church was an appropriate symbol for subaltern resistance, for the building that served as the church’s back wall was actually the village police station.

Duke welcomed us, and with three other dreadlocked church members we entered the building for what could be called a five-hour “reasoning” session. After we entered the church and turned on a boombox inside, Duke cut and sorted the seeds from some ganja and then heated the ganja on a hot plate to remove impurities such as fertilizers, pesticides and “things used on plantations” that may have gotten into it. He then packed it into the “chalice” and lit it. The chalice was a water pipe made with a large bamboo stem, a hollow water-filled coconut as a base, and a hollowed out stone bowl. It resembled the water pipes favored in many Rastafari yards, and it was similarly passed member to member throughout the reasoning session. Duke did not use the term “reasoning” to describe the church activities, instead referring to the passing of the chalice as “prayer.” His young daughter (perhaps 5 years old) was with us and was surprised to see me, a white man, in the church. She asked, as the chalice was passed to me, “You praying now?”

For some of the time at church we sat quietly, but at other times we reasoned and discussed the world. Duke said he was trying to get away from “churchy stuff” at his church: “We come when we want. We talk about what we want.” Typical of many Rastas, Duke was critical of Roman Catholics and distinguished the rules at his church from those of the Catholic Church, where formality made it impossible to eat or for kids to walk around during the service. Many of the topics we covered could be found at any Rastafari reasoning: what is a proper diet? If you avoid eating blood, is it okay to eat siwik (river crab), since it does not appear to have blood in it? What about crayfish? Salt?

We talked about the merits of “bush medicine,” the benefits of zèb chèpantyé (Carpenter Weed) as a blood cleaner. We talked about the roots of reggae and jazz. We talked about the “wickedness” people do and our responsibility to improve the world for children in this generation. Duke was particularly interested in talking about the merits of ganja. That was not surprising, and indeed the merits of ganja as inspiration, herbal remedy, or tea, or the economic benefits to be had through hemp production would also be a topic at any Rastafari reasoning. But Duke was particularly emphatic that ganja should not be smoked with any sort of tobacco, including the local Indian Tobacco (lobelia inflata). According to Duke, ganja is “lamb’s bread,” and “smoking is eating.” He reasoned that “Jesus broke bread” (i.e., he smoked marijuana) and that “real food” means “to be contented with God.” He considered smoking ganja to be eating real food because it satisfies, it brings “peace,” it “brings one to God.”

Physically, Duke and his church members resembled any other Rastas on the island. They wore dreadlocks and used much of the same argot as other Rastas. They also smoked ganja in the same way, using similar accoutrements, and they reasoned about the same topics in a common format. But although Duke would fit into what I have broadly defined as the Rastafari movement, he and his other three church members were adamant that they were not Rastas. Duke was a Dread. Dreads do not always constitute a self-identified group as they did at Duke’s church, but there are certainly many who call themselves Dreads in order to differentiate their beliefs from orthodox Rastafari.

In addition, there remain some general social and organizational differences between the two groups. For example, unlike many orthodox Rastas, Dreads are with rare exceptions from the lower classes. The Dread movement is far less hierarchically organized than most Rastafari groups, and with a few exceptions, like Duke’s small church, Dread practices are individualized, and often ad hoc and idiosyncratic. The Dreads remain a movement of small groups, without systematic communication among themselves, and thus they also tend to be associated strongly with particular villages or locales. There are also areas of worldview, ethos, rituals and food practices that differentiate Dreads from orthodox Rastas.

The clearest divergence between Dreads and more orthodox Rastas is in their attitudes towards a deity. Orthodox Rastas tend to maintain a belief in Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia, as God. Dreads, on the other hand, tend not to proclaim the divinity of Selassie. Duke, for example, ridiculed Selassie and Rastas who claimed any belief in him. Even Dreads who acknowledged Selassie as a great leader, or as a great African statesman, suggested that it is dangerous to worship a human being. Francis was representative of many Dreads when he said that he would not call himself a “Rastafarian” or anything else: “I would just call myself a living man.” To him the term Rastafari was a “perversion” because the term “Ras” means king, and it is a perversion to call a man king when in reality we are all just men. To him, Selassie “was man just like me.” It would have made no sense to accept Selassie as God: “How could it be? He lived on earth like us.” Instead, for Francis, “All of God is in everything.”

Most Dreads believe in a Creator god which they see manifested in the natural world that surrounds them. Abu, a more orthodox Rasta, reported that his Nom Tè friends see their religion based on nature, and they believe in the elements of Fire, Water, Air and Earth as that which manifests God. While some orthodox Rastas have criticized Dreads for worshiping the earth or fire itself, these claims exaggerate and misrepresent Dread theology, which instead simply represents a more general sense of the divine through elements of nature. Because Dreads see God primarily in nature, they often extol the time they spend in the forest—“the bush”—as a time of connecting with God through mystical-material  experiences of nature.

Dread and orthodox Rastafari eschatology also diverge. Orthodox Rastas tend to believe in an ultimate repatriation to Africa. Dreads are different: “We don’t really talking about going back to Africa. We establish Africa in ourselves, right here, ” says Matewe. Thus, like orthodox Rastas, Dreads reclaim the value of Africa and African heritage, but they continue to regard the physical connection to local territory as the primary marker of identity. Others echoed Matewé’s point. Vé valued his African heritage—and his Carib Indian heritage—but he saw Dominica as a “part of Eden” and was not interested in returning to Africa.58 Dread X said that repatriation to Africa would not be a bad thing as such, but added “I wouldn’t do that to myself.” He saw Ethiopia as something of a hostile place and preferred to remain in Dominica, his home. In general Dreads hold more of a realized eschatology than do orthodox Rastas.

Finally, many Dreads understand Dominica to have a special cosmological destiny that can be understood by exploring cycles in local Dominican history. Thus, where orthodox Rastas tend to hold the more linear conception of history that fits with messianism and apocalypticism (i.e., captivity in Babylon followed by redemption through Selassie in “Zion”), Dreads tend to hold a more cyclical conception of history that dovetails with the cyclical nature of agriculture and rural life in Dominica.

As Trouillot put it, Dominica is “a patchwork of enclaves.” More than any other concepts, “Apwé Bondye se Laté” and the ideal of local self-sufficiency reflect the ethos of the Dreads.

 Richard C. Salter is Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Religion & Human Sciences, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York.

Who is a Malayali Anyway?

G. Arunima

In 1806, an Anglican priest called Claudius Buchanan travelled to Kerala from Bengal to understand the relationship between Hindus, Jews and Christians there. In a letter that he wrote back home to one Sandys (possibly a colleague), Buchanan declares: “the bonds of infidelity and superstition are loosening fast.” In an extraordinary travelogue, collected and edited in several volumes of memoirs, he describes the different religious groups he met all over Travancore, their histories as he understood them, and what he saw to be their most distinctive attributes. What makes this fascinating ethnography remarkable is the complexity of Buchanan’s point of view. He was at once an Anglican amongst Syrians and Latin Catholics, a white missionary amongst co-religionists of a different race, an observer with a partisan interest in spreading the word. Buchanan’s meticulously maintained diary becomes one of the earliest accounts of the religious complexity of Kerala, which is often taken for granted without adequate scrutiny in contemporary discussions of the region and its past. It is a different matter that his narratives also throw a light on the emergence of print technology and public sphere in Kerala. But that is another story.

Buchanan narrates a delightful tale of his meeting with the priests (kasheesha) and elders in Mavelikara. Initially they were suspicious of whether he was a Christian at all and what his motivations were. Moreover, they were perturbed by his suggestions that they should translate their bible! They said that they could not depart from their bible because it was the true Bible of Antioch we have had in the mountains of Malabar for fourteen hundred years, or longer. They questioned Buchanan and his Western translations and in order to convince themselves that he was a true Christian and the copies he carried with him reliable. They set about to compare four copies of the third chapter of St. Mathew’s Gospel, in Eastern and Western Syrian, English and one Thomas’s translation in Malayalam. At the end of the exercise they found that all the translations were fine, except for the one into Malayalam. They had never seen a printed Syriac New Testament before and were astonished to see one, but every priest took a turn to read a portion from it, which they did fluently. Most of the places had ancient copies of the Scriptures, or of some part of them. Of these, the texts most commonly read were the Oreta, or the former part of the Old Testament, the Evangelion, the Praxeis and the Egarta. The Prophets were the rarest.

In Buchanan’s account, despite the initial resistance, most of the priests were amenable to the idea of translating the Bible into Malayalam. In a letter to one Henry Thornton on 24 December 1806 he writes, “Syrian is still their sacred language,and some of the laymen understand it; but the Malayalim[sic] is the vulgar tongue. I proposed to send a Malayalim translation of the Bible to each of the Churches; and they assured me, that every man who could write would be glad to make a copy for his own family.” They also assured him that they would establish schools in each parish for Christian instruction in Malayalam, which would be undertaken by four of the chief elders there, where the Bible in Malayalam would be the principle text book.

Two issues become apparent at this point. One, the complex mediation of Christianity in Kerala via the intervention of the Western church to the extent that even the idea of making the Bible available to the average parishioner in Malayalam appears to have come from outside. The second: that the initial need for print technology here, as in the case of Europe, too, seems to be coming from the desire to increase the circulation of the Bible. These two matters: that of language and of an emergent print culture has been central to discussions of modernity and the creation of ethnic identities, principally that of nationalism. But about that some other day. But the contemporary issues of Malayali identity also crucially go back to the pre-colonial interactions and today I’d like to talk about the originary myths of one particular group: the Syrian Christians.

For more than a thousand years Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus have lived together in Kerala.  By the 20^th century, the term Malayali was used to designate all these people across community or caste difference.  In fact, as soon as Kerala is viewed within the wider social geography of the Indian Ocean—an all together  different ‘regional space,’ the story about the insider/and outsider, belonging and identity take a different meaning. 

If we examine Kerala’s history as the narrative of these different groups as an integral part of its social fabric, what is immediately evident is that such a cultural mix was possible only because Kerala was connected to an extended network: from the Arab world on the west towards China on the east with large parts of the present South East Asia linked to it through established networks of trade.  This connection meant that Kerala not only nurtured a vibrant commercial culture but also that it had become home to people from diverse parts of this world, with their different cultural practices and belief systems.  From religion and ritual, dietary and culinary practices, and new technological inputs,  to a rich history of loan words that are an integral part of present day Malayalam language, today’s Kerala is shaped by the history of its geographical positioning. 

We gain an interesting tapestry if we consider the ‘origin myths’ about the arrival of the Jews, Syrian Christians, Mappilla Muslims and Nambudiri Brahmins – the four main groups that came and settled in Kerala somewhere between the  4^th and 9^th centuries CE. By juxtaposing conventional histories of Kerala with these stories of arrival and settlement, by means of trying to understand this complex past, one also hopes to isolate moments and contexts that are indicative of rather assertive religious identities at certain points of time.

One of the significant foundational moments for each of the three Semitic religions seems to have been the moment of arrival in Kerala.  In all these ‘origin myths’ under scrutiny here, it is significant that, for the Jews, Christians and Muslims, their arrival in Kerala is remembered as part of a momentous welcome.  Therefore, unlike the mnemonics of trauma and repression (especially within the Judaic tradition, and persecution in their homeland in the case of the Cananite Christians) that might be part of their historical memory in their lands of origin, what we witness in Kerala is a reversal of this ‘historical consciousness.’

Lets consider Christianity, which has had a rich and complex history within Kerala. By the 20^th century, almost all the major Christian schisms and sects have found a presence within Kerala. The “Syrians” claim two broad divisions amongst themselves – one the Western Syrians, who claim Apostolic descent from St. Thomas, and the other, the Eastern Syrians, who trace their origins from Thomas of Cana.  Unlike the Portuguese Jesuits who arrived on the west coast in the 16^th century, the Syrian Christians were not missionary and do not appear to have been proselytizers.  In fact, within their own self-perception they see themselves as the descendants of the first settlers. It is of course perfectly possible, especially when examining the degree of shared life cycle rituals, that many original residents in the region would have become followers of this new religion.  In fact, one of the earliest periods of “religious crisis” that we find on the Kerala coast was provoked by the Portuguese who targeted all three groups – Jews, Christians and Muslims – but it was the Syrian Christians who were probably the worst affected by this encounter.  However, in the history of religions in Kerala, with the arrival of the Portuguese one finds the establishment of the Latin church too, and until the mid 19^th century arrival of the Protestant missions from England and Germany, Christianity in Kerala was primarily “Nestorian” or Roman Catholic.

If one examines the ‘origin myths’ we witness certain repetitive themes and motives among all the four groups that I have mentioned.  In the Syrian Christian narratives of origin the most important is the Apostolic genealogy.  Referred to originally as the St. Thomas Christians (as a result of the tradition that the church was set up by the Apostle, St. Thomas) these followers of the Eastern Church claim to be the descendants of upper castes (principally Brahmin) converted to Christianity by St. Thomas himself.  The point of entry of the Apostle in India is also debated within ecclesiastical histories. Some claim that the Kerala coast was the original point of entry whereas others say that he lived and died on the Coromandel coast, and that the people were the descendants of those Christians who migrated westwards from there. 

However, the more important issue here is that as the original Christians, these people claimed a presence in India from a period almost contemporaneous with that of Christ.  The next critical event in this tradition is the contact with the Eastern Syrian church with the arrival of Thomas of Cana, known as Cnai Thoma or Thomman within the Christian narrative.  He appears variously as a merchant, traveller and pilgrim, and is meant to have brought a group of Christians with him at a time when clearly there were waves of anti-Christian persecution in their homeland. 

According to the Canaanite legend, Thomas set about transforming Kodungallur, organizing it as a Christian community around a church.  These two divergent points of origin within the collective memory of the St. Thomas Christians are probably responsible for their endogamous divisions:  vadakambhagakkar [Northists] and tekkumbhagakkar [Southists]. 

An early 18^th century tradition by a Jacobite priest named Mathew gives the following account.  After 93 years of being without a priest (after the death of St. Thomas) a non-Christian magician called ‘Manikkabashar’ appeared who attempted to wean Christians in Mylapore away from the faith.  Those who were faithful fled to Malabar and were received by their brethren. But these hundred and sixty odd families had no priests or leaders.  At this time the Metropolitan of Edessa had a dream about their plight which he narrated to the catholicos of the East, who then addressed a great multitude of the faithful, of whom many were bishops and merchants.  A certain Thomas from Jerusalem said that he had heard of Malabar and he was sent by the Catholicos to visit the place and report back.  Upon hearing his report, the Catholicos sent him back with priests and deacons, men, women and children from Jerusalem, Baghdad and Nineveh.  They landed in Maliamkara in 345 CE.  The Christians in Kerala welcomed them and all of them proceeded to meet “Sharkun”, the king of all Malabar.  He then gave them royal honors and complied with all their wishes. These grants were recorded on copper plates.   As a part of this grant, they proceeded to build a church at Kodungallur, and a township emerged there with 472 families. 

A late 18^th century anonymous account has a slightly different version of this story.  According to this St. Thomas had ordained priests from four principal families of the region -  Sankuri, Palamittam, Kali and Kaliave – whom he had baptized.  This was in 52 CE.  However the community began to decline as it lacked successors to the bishop. This was remedied by the “rich and zealous” merchant Cnai Thoma [Thomas of Cana] who returned to his homeland in Babylonia and brought with him one bishop and two priests, who were well versed in the languages of the Rite (Syriac and Chaldaic).

This version deals more with how the St. Thomas Christians came to be within the dominion of the Eastern Syrian church.  While it is not clear when East Syrian prelates began to come to India, certain reconstructions of Church history in Kerala date it back to the 3^rd century CE.  From then until about the 9^th century it is possible that there was a steady flow of prelates from Eastern Syria to India, even as the rest of the Church hierarchy would clearly have been Indian,  as attested by the Portuguese.  The complex history of the development of the ancient Syrian Christian church, described pithily by Podipara as ‘Hindu in culture, Christian in religion, and Syro Oriental in worship’, once again has to be told another day.

In a third account documented in the early 19^th century by Ward, one of the officers of the survey department in Travancore, the story is almost completely transformed. This narrative is said to have been in the Lebbi (probably Syriac) language but was explained to Ward in Tamil as follows:

‘At a former time seven persons of a strange religious persuasion came to Travancore; among whom the name Mar Thomas occurs.  The king of the country had previously received some admonitions respecting them in a dream. They called on the king to embrace their system, and to allow them to build places for their mode of worship.  The king demurred to their claims and said these must be proved.  He also summoned a council of Brahmans, enquiring if the new system ought to be received: who replied most certainly not.  The foreign persons ascribed to themselves the faculty of retaining the soul (when departed from a body) in the air above, and of recalling it, so as to reexamine the body; and, as stated, gave the proof of this power in the case of one among themselves.  The king, however, resisted their claims.  Soon after the king’s younger brother died; whereupon the recently arrived strangers told the king that if he would build seven churches in different places they would restore their brother to life.  The king made the promise, and the body of this brother became re-animated, awaking as if out of a sleep. In consequence both the king, and his brother, adopted the new system, and along with them 64 householders with their families received the initiatory rite of baptism.’

After this is a detailing of disputes within the community; and an account of the building of the first  seven churches.  This account too mentions ‘Manicavasavar’, referred to as “a person who chanted panegyrics, came to ‘Malayalam’ and disseminated the Saiva five-lettered system; teaching to swallow the Saiva compound of five substances; and to use the Vibhuthi or sacred ashes. He drew away several families”. It goes on to say that the head of the Christians received various privileges and immunities from Cheraman Perumal, who always directed the election of the Metran.

The traditions of the St. Thomas Christians point to a history of unconditional acceptance and the granting of extended privileges which covered religious (church building) and economic (land grants; establishing of a town) interests.  The relationship is established between the king and the leader of the community; while in these narratives, the king is not often mentioned (or else has an unidentifiable name), at least in the  third narrative one encounters mention of Cheraman Perumal.  Kodungallur once again is [one of] the principal sites of settlement.

The two instances that could suggest sources of threat to the community are both interesting – 1) of ‘Manicavasavar’ (or the Shaiva saint Manicavaccacar) attempting to win converts to Christianity back into the Shaivite fold and the 2) of Brahmins refusing permission to the king to convert (in the 3^rd narrative) both point to interesting symbolic and historical issues that shall be discussed later.

If we examine the principle themes and motifs in these traditions, especially with reference to religious identity, we see that these knit together narratives of a favorable arrival, prosperous settlement, as well as moments of stress and conflict that affect the internal ordering of communities as much as the relations between them.   In almost a parallel to the Mosaic tradition in West Asia, of which the three religions were inheritors, in Kerala too, the origin myths of the Jews, Syrian Christians and Mappilla Muslims share repetitive motifs in terms of travel, arrival at the same city (Kodungallur) and a royal welcome granting them economic and religious freedom.

What complicates the story is the relationship of  Islam as the third religion of the Book, and one that had a higher status than the other two (in Kerala, the Mappillas refer to the Quran as the Nalam Vedam or the 4^th Veda, the others being the Jewish and Christian texts).  By explicitly situating the origin myth of Islam within the existing tradition of origin of Judaism and Christianity (and a similar arrival in Kerala), and then ousting them from royal favor, we find an assertive statement of Islam, directed towards the other two Semitic traditions that had already found space within Kerala.  That story I promise to continue. Do watch this space.

G. Arunima is Associate Professor, Women’s Studies Programme, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Liturgical Architecture

Dennis R. Mcnamara

We live in an era that is not known for making beautiful churches. In fact, the sensus fidelium seems to indicate that something is indeed severely wrong with the unprofane architecture erected in the last few decades. Sometimes modern churches claim a vague Christian symbolism or association through shape or general motif, which is nonetheless found largely unsatisfactory. In other cases, purposeful attempts are made to avoid eschatological sacramentality. Many churches of the last half century seem to live up quite well to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s (who, along with Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, sought to offer an intellectual, faithful response to theological modernism) claim, adapted from Karl Barth, that without enthralling pangs of  beauty, theology does not inspire. If it is in the very nature of beauty to transport us to rupture, Balthasar asks, how could we then possibly dispense with the concept of the beautiful that is sharp and yet tangible, something that abstract modernism undermines?

This description certainly fits much of the church architecture of recent years. Yet, an unconsidered return to the Romantic historicism of nineteenth-century architecture cannot be a solution to today’s problems, despite the calls for traditional architecture appearing today. Even Ralph Adams Cram, twentieth century’s great proponent of a renewal of liturgical architecture through a return to medieval precedent, critiqued the nineteenth-century revivalists for their history-driven formalism. He called the Modernist “revolt” against the period’s parade of styles a laudable thing, but could not agree with its solutions, since “they were measurably inferior to what they have decried.”   We find ourselves in a similar dilemma. A return to a purely Romantic approach to architecture is not a true solution though the romantic spirituality of the Christian artists and aesthetic philosophers of the last two centuries (from 1860 to the present) is strongly brought out by their preserving a sense of the unity of beauty and religion, art and religion, when they had almost no support from theology.

A Balthasarian approach to liturgical architecture can avoid the pitfalls of both Romanticism and Modernism. To canonize a particular “style” of architecture only because of a historical association is an architectural aesthetic theology. However, the Modernist denial of historical styles precisely because of their historicity is also an architectural aesthetic theology. A Balthasarian solution beckons: begin by conceiving liturgical architecture as the form of Christ (Christus totus) in his sacramental, ecclesiological dimension in the liturgy. Liturgical architecture can therefore best be evaluated in light of its ability to bear the Christian message, that is, the “ontological secret” of the liturgical event, which by definition reveals beauty and results in joyfully rapturous discovery.

Balthasar writes about the apologetic nature of his “fundamental theology,” saying “the heart of the matter should be the question: ‘How does God’s revelation confront man in history? How is it perceived?’” One could ask the same question in architectural terms: “How does God’s revelation confront man in liturgical architecture? How is it perceived?” Here we have an architecture that is claimed to reveal the divine, and that, on the basis of this claim, demands that we should believe and therefore expend our resources in a certain way despite the clear, rationalistic overarching demands of economy, functionalist utility, and the Zeitgeist. What basis acceptable to the liturgical-architectural establishment can we give these authoritative claims?

Although the answer may seem redundant at first, it is worth stating that liturgical architecture is first and foremost liturgical, a bearer of the mystery of the anticipated eschatology of the Banquet of the Lamb. Balthasar speaks of the Church as an “event” in which the “power of the Christ-form expresses and impresses itself,” in which “the Lord becomes present in the assembly manifesting himself within it.” Both the Eucharist and the scriptures are described as making no sense unless enjoyed as a means of “impressing the Christ-form in the hearts of men.” Liturgical architecture can be understood in a similar manner. Liturgical architecture (and of course, figural art), as symbol of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb of the Heavenly Jerusalem, would make no sense without the Christian’s partaking in the invisible liturgy that it represents.

As part of an architectural theological aesthetic, liturgical architecture is not primarily an example of the trends popular in Architectural Record, a neutral setting for the horizontal activities of an improperly understood “People of God,” or a “skin for liturgical action . . . which need not look like anything else.” Rather, liturgical architecture should be capable of becoming part of the cluster of symbols that make up the liturgical rite. In other words, it should be considered sacramental, making present by way of foretaste the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the Heavenly Jerusalem. “If beauty is conceived of transcendentally, then its definition must be derived from God himself.”

This emphasis on the sacramental, eschatological nature of Christian worship and its liturgical architecture finds a decided sympathy with Balthasar’s writings. The liturgy is certainly one place where the encounter with Christ is made available to us. In fcat, liturgy is made up of two distinct movements. “First God is made present through words, signs, and symbols,” then “people respond to God’s presence in their midst through word, song, and action.” This second movement is not a separate event, but a spontaneous response to the first. If architecture is part of the system of symbols that make God known, then it is not simply the neutral beige background common to the post-conciliar era, but part of the “eschatological orientation” that “endeavors to make the divine present through a type of eschatological anticipation.”

Through its positive, beautiful images and sounds, and by its confident celebration of the eschatological banquet, it steps beyond the present-day signs of the kingdom’s distance and anticipates the time of the kingdom’s fullness. Thus, liturgical celebrations avoid the chaos, contingency, moral confusion, and existential anxieties that mark our transient lives. Liturgy needs the kind of eschatological anticipation implied by these characteristics if it is to offer the believer an encounter with God, since most do not have the contemplative vision to find God in the type of muck found in our everyday lives. If the salvific narrative, the “theo-drama,” is to captivate us and elicit our response, we must encounter it in its fullness so that we can perceive its divine rendering.

These claims are easily transferable to liturgical architecture, which, along with its art, should present this eschatological dimension of the liturgy. The altar should be read more as the banqueting table of the Lord than merely a community table. The figural imagery is more than abstract mood-evoking shapes or simple devotional imagery; it makes sacramentally present the Christus totus, including the heavenly assembly. The church building can present an image of the heavenly banquet in a building that images the Heavenly Jerusalem.

# Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1: Seeing the Form (San Francisco: Ignatius Press/Crossroads, 1983).

# Balthasar’s well-known writing on aesthetic theology and theological aesthetics can be applied to architecture directly. While a theological aesthetics begins with God’s transcendent beauty and his desire to allow man to participate in his divine life, “aesthetic theology,” by contrast, begins with the creaturely concept of rupture and attempts to universalize it.

Denis R. Mcnamara is assistant director and faculty member at the LiturgicalInstitute of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Chicago.